Nate Lanxon
Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.
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Tuesday 9 September 2008, 12:37pm
Please! Don't kill the iPod Click Wheel!
Gizmodo's Mark Wilson thinks Apple needs to abolish the iPod's Click Wheel because the devices' menus have become horribly long and complicated. While I agree with many of his points, I've never hoped more that an opinion doesn't become reality.
Some people hate the Click Wheel for its inaccuracy, whereas I adore it. On average I'll buy about three CDs a week (Amazon Marketplace for the win), and over the years it's meant I can't fit it all on my 160GB iPod classic.
This makes my list of albums on the iPod unfeasibly lengthy. Trying to browse a list this long on the iPod touch or iPhone frustrates me. It requires massive flicks of the hand on the touchscreen, over and over again, to get from Aborted, Behold... The Arctopus and Cannibal Corpse, down to Tool, Unearth and Vanessa Carlton.
On the iPod classic it takes a couple of seconds of thumb spinning. If you scroll fast enough, the classic speeds up how quickly the alphabet flies past you.
No more Click Wheel? I'd rather sandpaper my lips off -- I'd end up like Tweek from South Park if I had to browse albums on an iPod like contacts on my iPhone.
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Comments on this post
Apple would be mad to kill off the click wheel - it has a patent on the idea, which is why you don’t see exactly the same thing on other MP3 players. Without this unique selling point, what does the iPod have to offer other than a nice-looking design?
Posted by Jason Jenkins on Tue 9 September, 2008 12:57 PM
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I do think they need to do something with it though; it simply is not accurate enough on something like a 2/4gb nano, where you wont have more than say 30 albums and a few podcasts on it. Also just think about it for a second, if I want to go DOWN to my next album, I have to press to the right...it just doesnt seem logical. Why not make the wheel larger, thus able to be more accurate? You could even put a little d-pad on the central click button, allowing for even more accuracy and leaving the purists with the option of the d-pad or click wheel, without radically changing the overall asthetic.
Posted by richard on Tue 9 September, 2008 3:58 PM
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Completely agree. I makes sense on the iPhone, but no clickwheel on the nanos or classics would be rubbish.
Posted by Anonymous on Tue 9 September, 2008 11:42 PM
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Why so innacurate? On the album list on the iPhone/iPod Touch you can easily scroll down your list of music by running your fingers down the A-Z list on the right hand side of the device. If you are going to write something, please at least be accurate. I think CNet's expert isn't quite the expert they make him out to be.
Posted by Paul Kerton on Wed 10 September, 2008 10:24 AM
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Cheers Paul. You're right, and I've not used the alphabet scrolling option. However, my point is still valid because I only use my 16GB iPhone's iPod functionality with playlists -- one massive playlist, to be exact -- when I don't have my iPod classic, and scrolling through that long playlist has to be done like I described. Would I do this with, say, 64GBs of music? Probably not, no. But I'm very fond of huge playlists, and probably always will be. So I can only extrapolate that I'm always going to be very sad to see the Click Wheel go.
Posted by Nate Lanxon, CNET.co.uk on Wed 10 September, 2008 10:59 PM
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I agree completely, Nate. I'm very glad to see that the Classic and Nano haven't been entirely abandoned (though the departure of the 160GB Classic is concerning). As much as I love my iPhone, I think the biggest failure of it's beautiful design is its lack of tactile music controls. The new headphone buttons may help, but who really wants another crappy set of Apple headphones?
Posted by RGunther on Sat 13 September, 2008 9:45 PM
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